Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on May 14th, 2008

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I have limited time.

In places like Garden Hill, there have been horror stories of elders having to go out and chip holes in the ice to get water in the wintertime. I think it's really important that we have a good handle on what the houses—

[Michael Wernick]

We'd be happy to provide a written response, Mr. Chairman.

One of the reasons we're doing an engineering assessment is to say what the right sizing response is for a particular community. Some are more distributed; some are more clustered. If we can do work with wells and small systems, that might be better than a big plant. Doing it properly, with engineers, will probably give us a better set of answers.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I think that's a reasonable approach. It's just that when we're talking about water operating systems, there's a completely—

[Michael Wernick]

The test is health and safety, just as it would be in any other community.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Absolutely.

The last question I have is around both post-secondary education and the K-to-12.

The Auditor General issued a report on the K-to-12 part. My understanding is that there was a whole review happening. I wonder what the status of it is.

I understood there was a review of the post-secondary happening as well. The committee submitted a report, No Higher Priority: Aboriginal Post-secondary Education in Canada. In part, it called for funding for aboriginal institutions. I wonder what's happening with it.

[Christine Cram]

Okay. Thank you.

On K-to-12, indeed we have been actively looking at how to improve K-to-12. Some of that work resulted in $70 million over two years being identified in budget 2008. It's for two essential purposes. One is to look at introducing student testing and things like that so we have a far better idea of the outcomes. That's one aspect. The other aspect is to work in partnerships with the provinces. That's why the minister was speaking about the MOU that was recently signed in New Brunswick.

That's what we're doing on K-to-12. We're continuing to look at what's needed to bring us into 2008, to look to the future, and to have better education results. That work will continue, and we would hope to see more we could roll out into the future.

In terms of the post-secondary education review, we're certainly actively looking at post-secondary education. We're also looking at how aboriginal people, as well as first nations, may be able to take advantage of announcements in budget 2008 in terms of student financial assistance, which HRSDC is working on. We will continue to look at post-secondary education.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you.

Our last questioner today is Ms. Neville. You have five minutes.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

This race against the clock is always somewhat of a challenge.

I have several questions, but I'm going to start with a number of disparate ones.

Mr. Wernick, is it possible for you to give us a global picture, and probably a more specific picture, of how moneys have been reallocated? I'm particularly interested to know where moneys have been reallocated from education projects to water projects and from other capital projects to operating dollars. We've talked a lot about the movement of moneys. So that's one question.

Second, the Auditor General, in her report, has indicated that the government, through the department, has provided a plan in response to her report. Would it be possible for you to table that plan with the committee? I would be interested in seeing that.

My third question is not connected. We have been dealing with Bill C-47, which is currently in the House. We know that there will be an effort to bring back Bill C-21. Are there additional funds in the budget for the implementation of these bills, or will we be looking again at reassignments of dollars?

My fourth question, which we're not really going to have time to do justice to, is about the whole issue of housing. Clearly, the government has announced twice a $300 million fund for first nations market housing. I wonder if you could tell us why the department has made this a priority. Is there an expectation that this approach will address the existing housing backlog? Will it replace existing housing programs, and what's the implication?

Again, when we talk about Bill C-47, inevitably the issue of housing comes up.

[Michael Wernick]

Thank you. I'll try to be very quick and to do justice to your questions.

We don't have any new implementation resources for Bill C-47 or Bill C-21. You'll be able to question us further on that when the bills come forward.

On child and family services, I'd be happy to provide the plan and the response. What the minister said and what we tried to convey was that we went and got new authorities, which will allow us to move into a prevention model. We're arm wrestling over the special allowance. We will be moving forward on the implementation of this prevention approach with as many provinces as we can sign up as they come forward. I'd be happy to put some detail under that and come back, if that's the committee's wish.

On housing, there was money in the area of northern housing, which was discussed earlier, and the First Nations Market Housing Fund, the centrepiece initiative on reserve. That's on top of the A-base funding we provide and that CMHC provides. CMHC is about an equal partner. We do about $130 million and they do about $130 million in terms of on-reserve units. We could provide you with a bit of a progress report on that.

On the policy behind the market housing, you might want to bring in Chief John Beaucage, who is now the chair of the board of trustees of the new fund. It's not an instrument designed to solve all the housing needs on all the reserves. It is designed to deal with those communities where there is income and the possibility of outside borrowing. To the extent that this levers cash dollars to get more housing units, it will take pressure off social housing. It's obviously not going to fit the needs in all communities.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Could I just follow up on that?

Do you have a scan in the department of the housing needs in the communities?

[Michael Wernick]

We can provide our best sense of it, but you have to go out to the communities, and it's a bit subjective as to what's a need and what constitutes overcrowding and so on. But we can certainly try to provide some information to the committee on that. CMHC does a lot of work in terms of data gathering in a sense. I think you get very widely disparate numbers on what is a backlog in this area. But we'd be happy to provide some information to the committee.

I'm not ducking your question on reallocation. If it's within the pot of community infrastructure funding, what we get has to deal with schools, water systems, electrification, internal roads, and a number of things. It's not just a matter of planning. It's also the availability of contractors and tendering in a very tight market, especially in western Canada. Sometimes we'd like to do a project, and the first nation isn't ready. Sometimes the first nation is ready, and we can't get anybody to take the bid on the contracting, and so on. So our regional people try to jockey these lists, and something may move forward because another one yields the traffic. We can provide you a snapshot. We're trying to get better at tracking and predicting what we will do this year and what's on the list for next year. If it would be helpful, we could share that.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Where there are shortfalls in operating dollars, and it's necessary to go into capital allocations to—

[Michael Wernick]

That's a different reallocation issue, which I think was in the comment on this side of the table. Since we're not going to leave kids stranded, and we're going to pay our bills to provinces for tuition, and we're going to meet the needs of child and family services, we may have to dial back each year on what we can put—

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

But can you show where you're doing that?

[Michael Wernick]

That's the $100 million number, which I think Monsieur Lemay was getting at. We pulled back at the beginning of the year, knowing we'd have to pay the bills in child and family services and education. And to be very candid with the committee and with Parliament, we won't be doing as much infrastructure as a result, and that's because it's all inside this one box that's only growing at 2% a year.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you.

[Michael Wernick]

I don't know if I was clear there, but obviously we will pay our bills and we will meet our needs. The children come first.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

But you won't put a roof on the house.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Thank you, Mr. Wernick and your associates.

This concludes our questioning for today.

Ms. Crowder, did you have a question?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Chair, the research staff did a very good job of putting together the potential questions. I wonder if there's any possibility that those questions out of the package that weren't answered here could go to the department, and the department could provide a written response to those questions. There were some very detailed, complex questions, and given the limited time we have here, it was difficult to get answers to all of those good questions.

Secondly, I know the committee talked about having CMHC back here concerning the estimates. It's clear from the number of questions that we had about housing that having CMHC here for at least an hour so we could come back to estimates would seem like a good plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Okay, we have two issues.

First of all, we can provide a list of the written questions that we had to the department for answers. We can provide that to you, Mr. Deputy Minister.

Secondly, this gets back into the agenda of what we will be dealing with the week we're back. This is a bit of committee housekeeping business, but on the first day back, which is Monday, May 26, I will not be here, and I know that the other two co-chairs of the committee are not going to be here that day.

The next item on our priority list was the.... Was it the census or the housing?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Bonnie Charron]

I understood that it was Stats Can, only if the Auditor General could not have appeared prior to the minister appearing today, and the estimates were the priority for the following week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Right. There's also some speculation there might be something else happening in Ottawa that day. So it was my intention, quite frankly, to cancel our meeting on Monday, May 26, and that priority then will roll over and we will try to get that done for Wednesday, May 28.

Anyway, thank you very much again. We appreciate your being here today, and I'm sure we'll see you again in the near future.

The meeting is adjourned.